Statement by Barbara Blaine of Chicago, president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (312-399-4747, SNAPblaine@gmail.com)

Court opens predator priests’ files; Abuse victims respond

We’re grateful each time a determined victim is able to use the justice system to expose clergy sex crimes and cover ups. Despite bishops’ pledges of ‘openness,’ it still takes subpoenas and incredible pressure to get church officials to disclose their shameful secrets.

If bishops are reforming, as they claim, they have no reason to fight tooth and nail to keep church records about child molesting clerics under wraps. It’s both revealing and disturbing that bishops keep paying expensive lawyers to exploit every loophole and use every maneuver to hide the truth.

But we’re thrilled that long-secret church files about these 25 predator priests will finally be turned over and hopefully be publicly released. The more parents and parishioners know about predator priests, the safer kids will be.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 23 years and have more than 10,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

A judge has ordered the Los Angeles Roman Catholic archdiocese to turn over personnel files of 25 priests to a plaintiff's attorney in a molestation case dating to the 1980s.

However, Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias gave archdiocese lawyers until June 8 to gather the material, create an inventory and identify documents they believe are exempted by rights to privacy and irrelevance. Some of the priests are deceased and the judge said they would have no privacy privilege.

The files were sought on behalf of a man allegedly abused by a priest visiting from Mexico in the late 1980s. But plaintiff's attorney Anthony DeMarco is seeking the files as part of a larger effort to show that the archdiocese hierarchy knew about molestations and helped priests escape scrutiny by leaving the country.